Thursday, February 2, 2012

Homemade Beef Jerky

It was so easy, once I convinced Erica to let me leave our electric stove on overnight. Yes, that's right, carnivore's rejoice I have proven you can make your own delicious beef jerky in a 550sqft apartment. Behold!

So dry, so meaty

I followed the recipe in Ruhlman & Polycn's Charcuterie basically to the letter, except I didn't add the chiles and my oven only went down to 170 degrees so I had to leave the door open. The results were solid with a couple important notes. First, i didn't get the salt evenly distributed and so some pieces ended up quite salty, while others didn't. Second, my butchering skills need some work so the cuts were all over the place. Here are a couple more glamour shots of beef:

This was the test run for a Super Bowl appetizer and it encouraged me enough to try it again. Going to go with a cheaper cut of meet, London Broil, and see how it turns out. Really working to get the cost down to where this is more cost effective then anything Oberto has to offer.

FYI - I've been really digging the recipes in Charcuterie recently. I've already executed a salmon and shrimp mousseline and will be attempting a pork terrine with pork tenderloin inlay this weekend. Your standard Super Bowl snacks, they are not.